Patek Ref. 5235 Regulator Annual Calendar (Spy Shots)

This the new Patek Philippe Ref 5235, a Regulator with Annual Calendar — and it’s a real “WOW” watch, no doubt about it. Like the Patek Ref 3939 I showed you yesterday, the Patek 5235 is another Patek “first”. The “first” being the use of a “regulator” dial — which I briefly explain, below. In somewhat of an interesting twist, the Patek 5235 Regulator has not been *officially* announced by Patek, but word came to me through cyberspace after the watch was spied in the latest edition of the Patek Philippe magazine (Vol. 3 No. 4). Official images when I get them, but for now…here ya go:

As a quick refresher — in watchmaking tradition, “regulator” watches were special pendulum clocks, used by watchmakers in their workshops to set the exact time and therefore to test the precision of smaller watches. In order to achieve optimum readability of the time, the hands were positioned on different axes of the dial. Case in point — as you can see above — there is a sole central hand, dominating the dial as it marks the minutes. The subsidiary dials — seconds at 6 o’clock and hour dial at 12 o’clock round out the standard timekeeping “trio”.

Patek has also very tastefully incorporated day of week, month, and date windows, thus completing the watch with Annual Calendar capability.